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Kagami swallowed thickly around his unreasonable nervousness, still quite unsure where to let his gaze rest.
It wasn’t like this was the first time he’d gone shopping for groceries with Kuroko downtown. And, besides, the little guy’s presence was a huge help, considering the amount of ingredients he would be needing to whip up the celebratory feast he had promised his teammates in case they won their practice match yesterday.
Walking around town with Kuroko—his sort of-maybe-most probably best friend at the current time—was not novelty to Kagami. Yet, still, the whole air of borderline ridiculous festivity and ceremoniousness in the air downtown was just absurd.
What was it with Japanese people and making such a big deal of Western holidays? Were all the red balloons, heart-shaped chocolate boxes and flowers really necessary, Kagami begged to know?
It wasn’t like this was the first time he’d gone grocery shopping with Kuroko, but it was the very first time they’d done so on Valentine’s Day.
His nervousness was completely nonsensical, and he blamed it on his social awkwardness in such situations.
If only there were someone else with them.
Anyone, really! Anyone would do! Tatsuya would be Taiga’s immediate choice, or maybe even Kise. He was willing to even endure coach’s manhandling several hours early if it meant getting away from these weird silences that settled between him and his shadow as they sought out the ingredients. Oh, or maybe even—
“Aomine-kun,” Kuroko said evenly, giving Kagami somewhat of a start.
Had he mused all those things aloud? How did Kuroko know what he’d just been about to think—
That’s when his crimson eyes noticed Kuroko’s hand, raised in greeting. He cocked a curious eyebrow, following the path of the phantom sixth man’s gaze only to discover—
“Tetsu-kun!” a familiar bubbly voice exclaimed, before a small body barrelled into Kuroko’s embrace.
It was all Kagami could do to keep himself from face faulting as he noticed the duo that had approached them through the throng of people in the square.
“Aomine! Momoi!” he acknowledged the newcomers with surprise. Daiki gave him a nod in way of greeting, and he returned the gesture. He paused. “What are you guys doing here?”
“Shopping,” Daiki explained languidly. His hands were jammed into his jacket pockets as he walked up to stand next to Kagami. “Or at least we’re supposed to, if a certain someone stops getting side-tracked by every single store she sees.”
His pointed comment made Momoi stop her fawning over the amazing coincidence of meeting Kuroko in town with no previous engagement. She unhanded the teal-headed boy, throwing a searing glare over her shoulder at her childhood friend.
“Can you stop. Griping. Already!” She paused after every word for emphasis, crossing her arms over her ample bosom. She regarded her escort critically, the severity of her expression speaking volumes of her exasperation with his nonsense. “It’s not like we’re on a schedule here. I’m not even asking you to pay for anything I choose. What’s the big deal?”
Aomine heaved the deepest sigh Kagami had ever heard anyone expel, ever.
The redhead raised a curious brow as the Touou ace shook his head in clear disdain—which, he absently noted, seemed to only put Momoi into a worse mood than she was already in.
“See? That’s just the problem.” Her brows narrowed as she listened to his—surely—inane elaboration. “It would be fine if you even chose anything. Instead, you go through every hanger in the store, try on several things, and then walk out without buying anything at all. What the hell is that?”
Before their argument could escalate any further, Kuroko inserted himself between the two of them as a buffer.
“What a coincidence. Kagami-kun and I were going shopping for our club gathering tonight, too. What do you say we keep each other company as we go about our tasks?” he suggested in a friendly tone, the ghost of a smile tugging on his lips.
His placating tactic seemed to work, because the frown melted right off of Momoi’s face, and Aomine sighed again, rubbing his neck and looking away from them.
“That sounds like a great idea!” Satsuki all but sang out, hugging Kuroko’s arm to her buxom chest.
“I suppose…” Aomine allowed in a begrudging tone.
And although it had seemed like more trouble than it was worth at first, Kagami found himself thoroughly enjoying his time with the Touou duo.
When they weren’t caught up in their own world, bickering incessantly with each other, they actually made for some pretty fun company.
It definitely helped that he and Aomine were very alike, while Kuroko seemed to share some of Momoi’s interests: it allowed him to have company as he went CD browsing while Kuroko went into the bookshop across the road to look for a novel he’d been planning to buy for a while, with Momoi in tow.
They went through a sports store—the destination Aomine had had in mind to begin with. Kagami discovered—much to his amusement—that the reason Momoi had actually tagged along was to make sure Aomine didn’t spend his entire allowance in the sports depot.
It seemed the dark-skinned boy’s collecting mania was a lot more serious of a case than the Seirin ace had initially thought.
After they were done grocery shopping as well, they decided to reward themselves with a little snack and some tea at a nearby café.
Kuroko sat next to Kagami, quickly busying himself with the menu, while Momoi and Aomine sat next to each other on the settee across the table from them.
As the two of them huddled over the single other menu, the redheaded basketball player couldn’t help but realize something.
“Were you guys actually on a date before you ran into us?”
There was a heartbeat of a pause after his question—one plunged in complete silence at their table—and it passed so quick that you could even question its existence in the first place.
But Kagami noticed it, and he noticed the way Momoi stopped doing anything for the space of that moment, before she resumed her scanning of the menu with her sharp, intelligent gaze.
“Who knows,” Daiki said aloud, shrugging his shoulders in a devil-may-care manner as he chose what he wanted to order.
“Hey, Kuroko,” Kagami turned to his companion once the pair in front of them got immersed into a discussion whether or not Aomine was paying for Momoi’s order or not and why he should. “Are these two always like this?”
Kuroko’s gaze settled upon him for a long moment, before it shifted slowly to the couple in front of him. He watched them argue hotly in civilized, hushed tones until Aomine finally yielded and let Momoi do as she pleased.
Another ghost of a smile crossed his lips, his gaze returning to the menu in his grasp.
“Yes, you can certainly say so.”
Kagami made a pensive sound, directing his attention to the menu in his own hands.
He snuck a peek at the boy and girl in front of him while he was reading the articles of food and beverages the establishment offered.
He didn’t understand it. He’d lived in LA for quite a while, along Americans, and even there he had rarely stumbled upon a pair quite like them.
Their bond was so ambiguous it was almost baffling.
Sometimes he could swear that they were dating, and just messing around with everyone. Other times, Momoi would stick to Kuroko like glue, pledge her undying love for him and practically sing odes to his glory, confusing Kagami to no end.
The red-haired adolescent allowed his gaze to settle upon Aomine’s relaxed expression, wondering how the Touou ace could deal with that kind of treatment. Kagami could most certainly not imagine being part of that kind of relationship. And Aomine was a lot like him, right? So how did he handle it?
It was a mystery.
Soon, their orders came up, and Kagami’s train of thought left the station of the Touou pair’s weird relationship far behind, in favour of filling his mind and stomach with the deliciousness of the food they served at that café.
When Aomine’s slice of cake arrived, together with Kagami’s assortment of various sweets and Kuroko’s vanilla shake, Momoi stared longingly into her childhood friend’s plate.
She’d told him that she was on a diet, so she’d withhold herself from ordering anything for dessert. However, seeing just how delicious the cake looked made her mouth water despite her wishes.
Daiki took up his fork, letting it sink into the multi-layered pastry. Satsuki swallowed heavily as she looked at the tender bite disappear in her friend’s mouth.
Daiki was in the process of taking another bite out of his cake when he felt the intensity of a gaze upon him. He looked up, catching Satsuki’s eyes on him. He raised a curious eyebrow, popping another piece of the cake in his mouth.
The pink-haired girl watched gluttonously as the dessert got devoured again, and only then did she realize that she was acting like a kid.
Her face flushed in embarrassment. She turned her head away shyly, unable to hold her friend’s eye all of a sudden.
His beseeching expression made her demurely look up soon after, and, blushing all the while, she let her lips part as she opened her mouth. She leaned forward, closer to him, a compelling expression on her features.
Daiki’s brows rose even higher in surprise at her demeanour, but when she leaned in toward him like that, there was really no way he could say no, was there? It was unusual of her to be so bold, but who was he to judge?
Besides, she made for such a cute sight when she was begging that way.
So, of course, he obliged her.
He leaned in as well, closing completely the distance between their mouths in one fell swoop.
There was a clatter of metal on the table when Kagami lost hold of his fork, along with the ability to articulate any coherent words as he stared wide-eyed at the uncalled for public display of affection from their companions the redhead did not sign up for.
It felt like a whole eternity before Aomine let up, disengaging himself from Momoi, licking his lips as he did so. The guy had the gall to look perplexed at the astounded expression on the girl’s face.
“Why are you looking at me like that? That’s what you wanted me to do, right?”
The silence that befell their table in wake of his query was deafening. It made Kagami wonder just how much of a clueless idiot one could become without it being physically improbable.
“Aomine-kun,” Kuroko started, and Kagami could almost swear the little guy was on the verge of bursting out laughing. “I think what Momoi-san meant was that she’d like to try your cake.”
Daiki blinked innocently back at his former shadow, wrapping his mind slowly around the words.
“Oh,” he said eloquently at last. He stabbed his fork into the cake, taking a large piece of it and offering it up to Satsuki’s still hanging open in shock mouth. “Here you go.”
He was so nonchalant about this it made Kagami want to hide himself under the table from second-hand embarrassment.
It was an honest mistake. For his part, Daiki didn’t believe he could be blamed for making it. He wasn’t a freaking psychic, nor was he a mind-reader.
If it was cake she’d wanted, she really should’ve just said so.
Getting back to the previous light-hearted spirit of things proved to be difficult. Kagami could say even next to impossible. The only ones who seemed completely unfazed by Aomine’s totally random public display of affection were Aomine himself and Kuroko.
The Seirin ace couldn’t help but wonder, just what was the small guy made of? How was it possible to be able to continue acting completely normal after something like that happens right in front of you? How?!
Regardless of their mind-boggling exchanges, the time came for the Seirin pair to part with their companions. The light and shadow duo waved their goodbyes to the Touou couple, Kagami looking worriedly over his shoulder at Aomine getting his ears talked off by a deeply flustered Momoi.
“Are those two going to be okay?” he asked out loud, making Kuroko pause mid-stride.
The smaller-statured boy stopped in his path, half-turning to look at his former teammates behind them.
“Dai-chan!” an outraged Satsuki started, taking a firm hold of Daiki’s jacket. “What were you thinking?!”
He rubbed his ear demonstratively as means of letting her know she ought to tone her volume down. She refused to take the hint.
“What’s the big deal? We do a lot more than that at home all the time—” He started talking back to her, and his words made her face adopt the colour of a ripe tomato.
She cut across him before he could say anything she really didn’t want to become public knowledge.
“Yes, we do. At home. In private. Not in broad daylight, in front of anyone who cares to look!” she all but growled out at him, shaking him by his jacket.
He sighed, rolling his eyes away from her.
“I still don’t get what the big deal is. Who cares who’s looking—it was just a kiss.”
“The big deal,” she started out in a threatening hiss, pulling him forward by her grip on his top, “is that the least you could do is warn me you’re planning to do that kind of thing in public. You know, it’s the courteous thing to do?!”
She knew that he hadn’t heard her—or hadn’t understood her, which in essence was the same, when he threw her an obviously mischievous look out of the corner of his eye.
“So you’re saying I need to let you know before I kiss you in public?”
She opened her mouth to respond, only to snap it closed right after. She mulled it over quickly, before she reached a conclusion.
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”
“Okay then,” he said, taking a step closer to her. His face loomed in front of hers, his figure towering over her. She stared up at him, transfixed, as her hand fisted tighter the fabric of his jacket. “Satsuki, I’m going to kiss you. I’m going to do it right now, because I don’t care who sees and I can’t wait till we get home to do it, okay?”
Her face was adorned with the most beguiling pink colour in wake of his statement—because that was really what it was, wasn’t it?—and her jaw fell open in shock anew just in time to accommodate his lips crushing against hers.
She pushed against him, trying to pry herself off of him for what felt like a while, and she wondered. She wondered since when Dai-chan was capable of ignoring her wishes so blatantly, continuing to kiss her when she was trying to get away—only to realize that the hand that was supposed to be shoving him off of her was holding onto the back of his neck, pulling him closer, as she clung to his frame by her hand on his shoulder.
Kuroko allowed himself a secretive lopsided smile as he turned his gaze away from the pair, engaged in a rather intimate embrace in the middle of the street.
“Yes,” he said, pulling Kagami out of his reverie as well. The taller boy’s face had turned a shade of red that rivalled that of his hair. “I think they’re going to be just fine.”